I personally don't get the whole signing day thing. These are literally kids.
They are not mature mentally or even physically. Assigning rankings to kids like that is just silly.
It is also why I laugh at people puffing out their chests after a strong recruiting class. It does not mean a thing.
Literally the exact thing can be said about the NFL draft and guys who puff their chests out about having a strong draft.
Like someone else mentioned - you can look at the teams that recruit the best, per the rankings (247, rivals, etc) and they are the premier programs in CFB. Oklahoma, Clemson, Alabama, uga, OSU, Oregon, etc.
Like anything, there are always outliers. But dollars to donuts the top 10 at the end of the year is full of teams who finished in the top 10 in class rankings.
And I say this as a guy who finds recruit rankings (like the draft) completely comical. There are tens of thousands of high school seniors playing football. Comical to think rivals is breaking down film and is accurately ranking them.
But I think there is a clear seperation between the “elite” kids with measurables. Like a Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields. Those are plain as day better that 99.9 of other hs QBs.
I think it’s a complete crapshoot past the “top 250” kids. Give or take.
All about scheme/fit/coachability etc.
In other words, I think when a school signs the number #3 WDE in the country, then odds are that kid is legit good. When they sign the “#500 WDE” then i think that that’s more of an arbitrary rating and that kid might not be that much better or worse than kids rated significantly higher or lower.
Where the top draft picks often fail is because it’s so hard to predict how a 21 year old will respond when he’s suddenly rich.
Whereas most blue chip recruits fail is,IMO, a lot grow up being worshipped and caddied to by coaches who needed them to win. They get their ego stroked all through the recruitment process. Then they sign an NLI and get on campus and they’re just another one of the guys and they have to work sometimes significantly harder than they ever have before without getting their asses kissed.